Finally, as a reward at the end of a rather intense semester, we’ll go for a restful and interesting excursion, as well: On next Tuesday, 8th of July, we’re politely invited for a visit at 908.

908 is an award-winning motion design and visual effects production with an in-house sound studio. As a design-driven agency known for its originality and sophistication, they produce top-notch visual and audio content for commercials, image/corporate and product films for broadcast, online, events and print. For ten years now, 908 works in 2D/3D animation and film production, providing international brands and agencies with a full range of services, including concept and storytelling, design and look development, CGI, VFX and motion design plus music and sound design …

We’ll meet on July, 8th, at 3:00 pm, sharp, at the entrance of U1 station Schlesisches Tor and together we’ll walk to:

908video gmbh
Köpenickerstr. 187/188
10997 Berlin-Kreuzberg

Although this excursion is dedicated for the participants of 3D.II, everyone else being interested will be very welcome but should drop me a note.

As said before, this Wednesday, 11th of June, we are going to HHI / TiME-Lab for watching your first attempts in making panoramic animations for the large 180° stereo-projection screen.

We’ll meet downstairs in the foyer of BTK at 2:15 pm – sharp! – and together we move to

Heinrich Hertz Institute
Einsteinufer 37
10587 Berlin

Please, be there on time! Since we are not allowed to move freely inside of the building, we’ll get picked up in their foyer at 2:40 pm. – Although this excursion is compulsory for the participants of 3D.III, everyone else being interested will be very welcome but should drop me a note.

Due to a malfunction of one of their 14 stereo projectors, our today’s excursion to HHI/TiME-Lab unexpectedly got cancelled; next time we’ll try to go there will be June 11th – so you got some more time to work over your projects!

London-based creative agency DBLG shows the way with Bears on Stairs, a short clip that combines a 3D printed character with traditional stop-motion animation to charming effect:

The loop of the bear climbing up a recycled escalator in Sisyphean perpetuity has a 2-second run time and took four weeks to complete, the action took 50 printed models in all. Interesting, as shown in the according video at vimeo, the modelling of the animated character by Blue Zoo was done using Cinema 4D.

Since we are not allowed to move freely inside of the building, we’ll get picked up there, please be there on time! – Although this excursion is compulsory for the participants of 3D.III, everyone else being interested will be very welcome but should drop me a note.

In summer semester 2014, upcoming advanced 3D.III course is solely dedicated to stereoscopic animation for the large 180° panoramic projection screen of the TiME-Lab. Due to cooperation between BTK/3D-Lab and Heinrich Hertz-Institute, again BTK students exclusively will get the chance to play around with (and within, as well) the unique and unrivalled immersive environment of TiME (= Tomorrow’s immersive Media Experience).

All participants of 3D.III will work together – as a team – on one or more, if possible, animation – whether abstract or not – for that specific situation of the TiME-Lab using the cylindrical C4D camera rig developed by Jean-Claude Rosenthal and me. Right at the beginning of the semester, as soon as possible we’ll go for an excursion to get an impression of the TiME-Lab itself, which opens a new range of cinematic and narrative possibilities – stay informed!

Michael Welter recently provided his C4D plugins for Mac operating systems. Written by himself for his own projects, the scope of these plugs comprises various issues in the field of shading and modeling; they are relatively small and minimalistic, but also quite powerful and useful – and, last not least, they are available for free.

If you want to play around with some new physical render engine for Cinema 4D you may try the beta version of NOX which currently is still offered for free (who knows how long?): NOX is a stand-alone, physically-accurate state-of-an-art renderer, its engine is based on unbiased methods, and many post-production actions can be done internally, so no additional software is necessary. However, it is compiled only for Windows systems yet …